Crouse's film career began in 1976, with small roles in television and theatrical movies. In 1977, she appeared as Lily Braden, the discontented wife of hockey player Ned Braden in Slap Shot. Crouse was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1984 movie Places in the Heart. Among her films was a starring role in House of Games, the 1987 film directed and written by her then-husband David Mamet, in which she plays Margaret Ford, a psychiatrist who is intrigued by the art of the con. "It's always hard to be directed by someone who's close to you," Crouse says. "Because everybody needs to go home and complain about the director. Everybody."[9]

In recent years, Crouse has concentrated on the theater. "Once you get your driver's license, you end your film career," says Crouse. "Look at my generation. Great actresses like Glenn Close and Susan Sarandon—there's nothing written for anyone over a certain age."[10] In 2007, Crouse opened a revival of The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman show about the life of poet Emily Dickinson, at the Gloucester Stage in Gloucester, Massachusetts. "You can't stop and recite something," says Crouse. "You have to keep the poetry very, very active, which is pretty easy with Dickinson. She was striving so hard to understand what life was about. It's very dramatic poetry in that way.[11]

Crouse appeared in Lee Blessing's Going to St. Ives with the Gloucester Stage Company during the summer of 2008[12] and provided the narration for Virginia Lee Burton: A Sense of Place, a documentary film about Virginia Lee Burton.[13]

Crouse married playwright David Mamet in 1977. The two had met during the production on Slap Shot.[14]John Lahr writes in his book Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles that when Mamet married Crouse in 1977, he "married into show business aristocracy". Lahr also writes that Mamet got his first screenwriting assignment through Crouse. Crouse was on her way to audition for Bob Rafelson's 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mamet told Crouse to tell Rafelson that "he was a fool if he didn't hire me to write the screenplay." Although Mamet was joking, Crouse did it and Rafelson called Mamet; when the director asked why he should hire him for the screenplay, Mamet replied: "Because I'll give you a good screenplay or a sincere apology." Mamet got the job.[15] She and Mamet divorced in 1990.[16] Their marriage produced two daughters, Willa and Zosia Mamet.

Crouse is a Buddhist and a direct student of Sumati Marut. In 2005, she organized an annual Buddhist educational program, originally held at the Windhover Center for the Performing Arts in Rockport, Massachusetts,[18] and then in 2010 moved to The Governor's Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts.[19] "[Buddhism] is not an exclusive club. It has something to offer everyone at all levels," says Crouse. "Buddhism is dynamic and has captured the interests of Americans. Even our quantum physics validate[s] ideas the Buddha taught 2,500 years ago."[20]